My father, during the depression, was educated by unemployed Columbia professors and graduates who could not find any job but teaching at grade and high school level. He was hardly inveigled into communist ideology. Columbia had a left turn during the tumultuous 60s with the free speech movement.
Most of the radical students of the 1930s went through the CUNY system because they were often Jews who were banned from Ivy league universities.
When I was in college, the several different profs I had, who had graduated from Columbia, were completely non-political ( not a one of us had any idea what their political leanings were at all ), were some of the best teachers I have ever had, bar none ( this includes my grad school ones ), and their expertise, in the subjects they taught, was beyond reproach!
The Columbia profs, who were friends of my grandparents, were likewise extremely intelligent, erudite, well spoken, well mannered, and also amazingly kind to a little kiddo ( me ), when I was in their company.
Not a single one of these people EVER attempted to foist their political views on anyone.
Dewey was a weirdo and at Columbia long before I was born. He was the exception to the rule/the rest of the profs who once taught there and an object of ridicule to boot! He also taught at The U of C and while there, founded Lab ( the private day school that the Obama girls went to, when they lived in Chicago ), which was widely known, by the cognescenti, as the school for weirdos and nutcases since it opened.
LOL....sadly, re :HAMILTON", you're probably correct.
The radicals and MARXISTS, until the late 1960s, went to CITY COLLEGE ( though a few did go to NYU ); there was no CUNY until rather recently. ;^)
This article, heading this thread, is ab out the Muslim takeover of Columbia, which is also a newish wrinkle. IIRC, Edward Said, the Jew hating POS moron, was the first Muslim prof to teach at Columbia. He didn't start out being all that "influential/nuts, but as time went on....he became the spearhead of the Anti-Israel/anti-Jews at Columbia and many other were then brought in.